A FATHER AND A BICYCLE.(childhood reminiscences)(Brief Article)

Publication: The New Yorker

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COPYRIGHT 2002 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

My father was not a man blessed with unusual talents. If a model father can rebuild the lawnmower, rig up a punching bag properly, offer tips on your science project or advice on your lifesaving merit badge, help with math homework, put a new bike together, or replace a screen on a patio door, then my father was not a model father.

My earliest Christmas memory is of lying in my bed late at night, hearing my father--with my mother as his assistant--attempting to assemble a snare drum Santa had been commanded to deliver. Work went on in the living room for hours. I can still hear the sizzle of the loose snares on the drum's bottom as my father sought to stretch them, the squeak of brass screws that pulled the skin taut as my mother whispered her help and my father grunted and muttered with thwarted patience. In my mind today--fifty years later--I still see the bead of yellow...

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